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Tomorrow is National Arbor Day (Friday). We celebrated it a few days early, at Friends Hospital in Northeast Philly. That’s where we got together with other Penn-Del ISA companies to help restore a magnificent but neglected landscape through donated tree maintenance work. Aerial photos of Friends Hospital. This is the first time we’ve gone to the same location in consecutive years, and I’m happy that we did- I believe we have helped them catch up to the point that they can maintain these grounds so the public can truly appreciate what is there.Arbor Day 2010Arbor Day 2009
Some photos of what we did:
This weeping European beech had lots of dead wood and was overgrown with vines.

Scott gives Dave a tree biology lesson before the pruning starts. He’s explaining why the sprouts that are growing from the roots are genetically different from the rest of the tree, by pointing out where the tree was grafted.

(see the non-weeping rootsprout behind Scott, on the left?)

We had the pleasure of meeting Paul Freda, a self-employed arborist from Pottstown. He and Ricky worked together pruning the beech.

Paul is a great climber and very knowledgeable (he taught us about the amur corktree adjacent to where we were working). I hope sometime we get to work together in “real life!”

Done.

Scott got the worst of the dead wood out of this red maple (for the second year in a row!) This tree is in it’s final years, it’s doomed because of girdling roots.

Then we moved on to this red maple. Here Scott is setting his climbing line from the ground, while Paul works his way up the tree setting the line as he goes – the old fashioned way. Fun for me to watch- reminds me of “the day.”

Yes, Scott made it up there, too!

A final little detail- a round ended bark tracing on a nasty storm-damaged wound.

Today was Arbor Day for us! Not the official arbor day – that’s not until Friday here in Pennsylvania. But it is the day the Penn-Del Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture held their annual day-of-service Arbor Day celebration. Each year several companies from our area get together and provide pro bono tree care at the grounds of a worthy non-profit organization that just is not able to budget for the tree maintenance work they really need. This year’s recipient was Friends Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia. A great time was had by all of us, many of whom compete against each other in the tree care business every other day of the year. But this day was different – there was great camaraderie among us as we teamed up and worked on some really special and sometimes historic trees for a good cause.

The Jacobs Tree Surgery crew pruned this cedar-of-Lebanon. It was in bad shape from snow-storm damage.

Mike Chenail, our Penn-Del Arbor Day committee chairman, coils his climbing line after an aerial interview with KYW’s Karin Phillips. Here’s a link to the interview, if you click the audio part on the right you’ll hear all the background banter.